Relationship Between Mental Skills and Penalty Kicks Performance in the Elite Penalty Shooters in Iran’s Professional Football Teams

The goal of this research was to predict the elite penalty shooters performance in Iran’s professional football teams, depending on the level of their mental skills. Because of this, 20 penalty shooters of professional teams including the Iran’s national team and Persepolis team were chosen by patterning way as available. The mental skills that were studied in the research were evaluated by the Ottawa mental skill assessment tool questionnaire (OMSAT). For determining the operation of penalty shooters in the current research, the whole penalty shoots during the nine leagues from the side of the participating players have been considered in the study. Pearson’s test of correlation index were used to analyze the data. Results showed that among the basic mental skills, psychosomatic and cognitive skills have a meaningful correlation with success in penalty operation and success in the operation of penalty shooters of professional football teams can be predicted by the mental skills. Therefore, football coaches should pay attention to the improvement of players’ and specially penalty shooters’ mental skills and use the practicing programs of mental skill to improve the mental preparation of players and specially penalty shooters.